Ryans second round 80 gallon SPS build

Ryan Holly · Apr 14, 2018

Hi all,
Haven't posted much here, but wanted to start documenting my 80 gallon build. I previously had a 90 gallon SPS dominant tank, but a move from Montana to Oregon, kids, and graduate school made me put my love for this hobby on hold. Now that I can see the light at the end of the tunnel with graduate school, and my kids being an age when they can participate in this hobby, I have started accumulating the equipment necessary to set up a new tank. I recently purchased a custom 48" x 18" x 18" tank from Julian at Crystal reef aquatics, along with their TS44 sump. Stand is built, and currently we are tilling our family room to make way for the new tank. I have updated my DIY LED's from my previous tank by enclosing them in a fixture along with 4 36" t5's. Here is the progress I have made so far.

Stand and Tank

Here is my lighting that I just finished today:

Tahoe61 · Apr 15, 2018

That lighting fixture is awesome.

Congrats on the new build.

A_game43 · Apr 15, 2018

Great start - your DIY light hood looks great - Well Done!

SneakyTortuga · Apr 15, 2018

clean looking tank!!

Ryan Holly · Apr 26, 2018

Morning all. Been busy re-tilling the family room. Had to remove about 400sqft of asbestos tiles and that sucks. Getting ready to tile this weekend, and then back to my build. In this process we have decided to change a few things with regards to my tank and this is where I need some reassurance. I now am going to have my sump underneath my stand, and the current stand I have will not fit it. So I want to build an oversized stand that will house my sump along with dosing and ATO. With that in mind, I was planning on building your standard 2x4 stand that is 5' x 24" using RocketEngineers design:
http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=1169964
If I put down 3/4" plywood over the top and add a few extra cross braces is it going to be a problem that my tank edges aren't sitting on the verticals? This is a rimless tank, so the load should be distributed throughout. I am not an engineer, but this seems more than ok, but there seem to be differences in opinions. My tank is 48x18. Thoughts?

Ryan Holly · Apr 27, 2018

Ryan Holly · May 1, 2018

We have been up to a lot of demo and not a lot of tank work as of late. Here are some updates of our VAT removal and installation of new tile. We had never done this before, but very happy with the outcome. Just need to lay a few more tiles, and then clean and grout. Then onto building my new and improved tank stand. Someday this beautiful tank will be filled with something.

Ryan Holly · Jun 21, 2018

Time to update. We got the floor all finished.

Originally I was going to put the sump next to the tank, but when we decided to move it into the family room, we didn't have the room, so needed to put it underneath the stand. The sump was too large to fit under the stand of a standard 4 foot 2x4 stand, so I had to build a larger box to put the tank on. The stand measures 5' x 2', so will fit a 150 if and when I upgrade in the future.

Here it is all skinned and painted

I have all the plumbing dry fit and ready to be glued. Built some doors, and will trim it at some point. I really want to get some water in this thing, so the trim may come later.

Thanks to all for the feed back. I know this is a slow build, but it's getting there. Grad school and family run my life, but I still find time for this wonderful hobby.

Ryan Holly · Jun 22, 2018

Equipment list update so far:
Tank: Oceans by Design (crystal reef aquatics) 48" x 18" x 18" 1/2" 3 side starfire with ghost style overflow.
Sump: Triton 44 by crystal reef aquatics
Pump: Royal Exclusive Red dragon 3 mini speedy 50w
Skimmer: Nyos quantum 160
Lighting: DIY LED (mix or royal blue, blue, cool white, natural white, cyan, green, and red). The lighting is supplemented with 4 36" T5 bulbs (2 x blue+, 2 x coral+)
Powerheads: 2 x MP40's

Ryan Holly · Jun 28, 2018

Got the lights up and running. Going to fill it with water in the next week or so for a leak test.

Starting to work on my aquascape

Ryan Holly · Jul 3, 2018

Working on my aquascape. I'm not the most artistic person. This will be an SPS dominant tank so trying to get lots of good space to plug in frags. What do you all think? Any ideas?

joseserrano · Jul 3, 2018

Nice clean build.

Ryan Holly · Jul 3, 2018

Thanks!

Ryan Holly · Jul 3, 2018

Definitely had my share of setbacks, and its not quite how I had envisioned it, but it's coming together slowly but surely.

Ryan Holly · Jul 3, 2018

Filling with H2O. Still need to get the front face of my overflow (that is a screw up I would rather not talk about). Hopefully next week I can do a full leak test on the plumbing

Ryan Holly · Jul 25, 2018

Well, after a stupid mistake, and then a trip back to Nebraska to visit family, I am finally able to do my full leak test. This is always the most nerve racking part for me. We spend so much time and MONEY to do it right, and then we get to see if we were successful (at least with the initial set up and plumbing). Had one small mishap, where I put the gasket of the overflow box between the inside of the tank and the internal box. dumped about a gallon of H2O behind the tank. Easy enough to clean up, added another gasket between the outside overflow box and the outside of the tank (the box came with four gaskets, so makes sense that I should have done that to begin with). Anyway, sump is filling and no leaks yet. Should be able to start running the pump tomorrow and maybe I can get salt in it by the end of next week. This has been a very slow build with family and school.

Ryan Holly · Jul 29, 2018

Finally got the tank all filled with salt water and ready to start the cycle. Pretty happy with how things are looking. The rock work may take some adjustments. Got the bean animal working properly and quite. I was having problems with it. When I would simulate a Power outage, the BA wouldn't restart and would get dangerously close to flooding. Turns out the pipes that go into the sump were too long. I cut them so they are 1-2" below the surface and all is good. This thing is pretty quite. I spent the extra doe and bought a Red Dragon 50w pump. That thing is quite. Have it running full blast and I can't here it over the water trickling over the baffles in the sump.

Ryan Holly · Aug 2, 2018

Tank is filled and cycling. Still playing with the rock work a little. What do you think?

Ryan Holly · Aug 11, 2018

Well, I am now 2 weeks into my cycle. On August 2nd I added Tim's one and only and dosed ammonia, then added ammonia 2 days later again. Here are the levels over that period (tested with salifert):

8.2.18
NH3: 1-1.5mg/mL
NO2: 2.5-5mg/mL
NO3: 5-10mg/mL

8.4.18
NH3: 1.5-2
NO2: 0.5-1
NO3: 25

8.6.18
NH3: 0.5-1
No2:2-4
No3:50-100

8.8.18
NH3: 0.25
NO2: 0.1-0.5
NO3: >100

8.11.18
NH3:0-0.15
NO2: 0.1-0.2
NO3: >100

On 8.7.18 I added a macro sampler pack to the refugium. Figured that would start to take down my nitrates. Today I went out and got some live rock rubble and a few pieces of live rock from the local fish store to help seed with coralline.

I started up the skimmer to try and break it in. Causing a lot of microbubbles, but it appears that is just part of the break in.

Got my GHL Profilux controller all set up. Waiting for the LED controller so I can control the lights. Right now it is in charge of heaters, my Kessil H160 refugium light, and my ATO. Things are coming together quite nicely. Here are a few updated pics.

Cheers